


Deserted

by winterysomnium



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, city date, pining shiro, pre-kerberos, special guest: shack in the desert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-08-23 23:08:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8346397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterysomnium/pseuds/winterysomnium
Summary: “So, did you figure out this was a date yet?”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this prompt on tumblr: Anonymous asked: how bout some sheith with jealous!shiro.

It’s something irrational, something dragged, through heavy earths and splinters, something that Shiro feels stir somewhere between his teeth and his mind, colouring with the meanest of shades; it’s like the fear of dying in the simulator, fear of the crash they’ve done week after week last year, engine failure, sounds, too loud, the ground, the embrace, the gasp of the impact stolen from his lungs, running from never there flames.

Irrational at best, escaping at worst and despite it all, he wants Keith to finds things he loves, he wants him to experience the world in ways he couldn’t before, even if there’s a cadet that takes Keith’s tips too seriously, a cadet that smiles shyly when Keith takes his elbows and changes the trajectory of his punch, when Keith grows into comfortable spaces, when he spends hours tutoring the younger ones, Shiro stuck doing reports, field exploration and not even their lunch breaks line up anymore; Keith’s already in his class when Shiro’s barely washing his hands.

But he finds him in his room, late and comfy, dressed for bed and someone got their mail mixed up again and Keith is reading through a textbook two years in advance, Shiro’s roommate gone for the weekend, Shiro drops the remains of his shower onto the floor and they turn to mirrors, distorted and shy.

“Hey. Got your letters again.” Keith waves with his hand, the direction sloppy but Shiro spots them easily, his Mother’s writing standing out in loops, in minutely crooked rows, and Shiro wonders if they ever hurt Keith, strangers as they are, if they hurt because they’re never there for _him_.

(Keith has never gotten a letter here and he says he didn’t give his address to anyone, anyway, but Shiro already made plans to send him a few, when he’s visiting home this summer, and he wants to send him a postcard, too, something sent into Keith’s mailbox correctly, something that belongs.)

“Thanks. How was class?”

“Pretty cool, actually. We did zero G training.”

“I was thinking that you look taller.” Shiro grins and Keith slaps his thigh with the textbook, sits up in Shiro’s bed.

“When are you leaving for home?” Keith asks, nodding at his desk and there’s a bruise tracing his arm, fresh, tender, galaxy blue.

“Not for a while yet,” Shiro answers, takes the letter and opens its spine, swiftly, touches his own with the room’s faded paint, his bed adjusting to his weight and Keith’s knee brushes his elbow and he faintly wants to trespass into Keith’s aching shoulders, into Keith’s crawling tiredness, the warmest point of his existence, the bite of his bones.

“Want to ride to the city someday? I need some things,” Keith asks and the answer is already building in Shiro’s mouth, without his mind interfering, in any way.

“Sure,” Shiro says and remembers the cadet grasping at Keith’s defense, struggling to evade the offenses, sharp and fast, and he feels smug, feels like he’s won in a distilled, uncertain way, like they made a bet and Shiro just got his ten bucks handed to him, with a grumble of defeat.

“What are you smiling about?” Keith asks and Shiro doesn’t let the question implode through his teeth, doesn’t let reality hide the things he’s feeling, he bumps Keith’s shoulder.

“Just in general.”He shrugs and that’s not answer, Keith argues, but he picks up the textbook, again, as Shiro relearns the voice of his home and writes the response out next to Keith, close, paging through terms Shiro will have a test about next week and something in him stays as warm as the shower has been, heated with fire, with electricity, strung thorough all of them (human); Shiro keeps the storm alive.

The drops on the floor dry, Keith sneaks out of his room long after curfew and Shiro just wants him to stay, for the whole night, buried in his bed sheets and resurfacing just barely, just somewhere above Shiro’s back.

“Don’t get caught,” he says, instead, and “you could stay,” he adds and Keith says he’d better go, smudges the remains of the water with his feet and Shiro keeps him at the corner of his mind, for the rest of the night.

\---

Keith drives like he’s intent on breaking the barriers of sound, Shiro’s fingers curling around the outside of his jacket’s pockets and the world tries to catch up to Keith’s laugh, to the leftover vertigo when they stop for gasoline, for that brand of chocolate bar they don’t sell anywhere else and Keith seems to crave sometimes, and there’s a confession at the tips of Shiro’s fingers, spilling ahead of his words, when they walk through the store and Keith picks at things he needs, things he wants but won’t think too long about, things he leaves for the future, for days of no school.

They stay until the desert creeps in, sand curling in windy waves, the sun grasping at empty fields and there’s an old building whose porch Keith likes to sit at, to share the stories of the abandoned walls with and they found a scorpion there once and somehow that makes the place more fun for Keith, more real, as the wood changes to washed out white and his boots sink into the dunes, like roots, searching for last month’s rain and Shiro sits close until they resemble branches of two trees, sharing a can of sweet sweet coffee, not warm, not cold, stinging against his mouth and Shiro offers it to Keith, again, but Keith lies down onto the unreliable planks, his jacket the pillow to his head, his softest angle.

 His arms have to be cold but they bet on who spots the first star, they bet on which constellation is the first to change, which star is but a memory and somewhere in between the moon and the night, Keith sits up, fiddling with a stone that toppled to his feet, stops when Shiro looks at him, amused.

“So did you figure out this was a date yet?” Keith asks, warmly, watching Shiro’s face second after second, honest and happy and maybe nervous, underneath, like an earthquake, newborn, waiting for Shiro’s world to not be dazed, to not be a smudge against his lashes, and Shiro says “What?” and Keith laughs.

“And here I thought it was really obvious.”

“We went _shopping_!”

“I bought you lunch.”

“Because I have lent you my bike!”

“Yeah, _okay_. But I also bought you ice cream.”

“You -- you wanted this to be a date?” Shiro asks, with hesitation, with crafted carefulness and Keith’s shoulders shrug, like it’s impossibly difficult, too long.

“I _want_ this to be a date. If… if you do.” and something shyer stays on Keith’s mouth, something frayed and thinning under Shiro’s silence as Keith’s shoulders slump, ready to be soaked in the weight, in the gentle rejection of Shiro’s mouth.

“It doesn’t have to be,” he says, quiet, like it’s already been dismissed and Shiro doesn’t have time to catch it anymore, doesn’t reach out far enough to dig out the buried hurt.

(But he tries, anyway.)

He places a hand on Keith’s shoulder, another on the splintered wood and smears Keith’s protests against his mouth, wastes away the surprised motion and Keith presses close when he gets the intention, his gloves rough on the back of Shiro’s neck, in his hair, Keith’s jeans snug under his palms, as he drags him forward, into Shiro’s own gravity and Keith stops to look at him, to hold him bare.

There are alien colours in Keith’s irises and emotions growing out of his palms and distantly, Shiro remembers the cadet that talked too loud and stopped too close and wasted too much of Keith’s afternoon and the irrational, ugly, scratchy feeling he felt dissipates, slithers into the depth of his mind, his very own dark side of the moon; Keith leans in, again.

“I think I noticed now. That it’s a date,” Shiro says, hoarse, in between, and Keith snorts into his neck.

“What gave it away?” he asks and Shiro gets all tangled up in his edges, in the comfort of knowing this person knows him too, just enough, just enough to trust him with his heartbeat, with his unexpected soul.

Before the answer resurfaces, Keith takes his mouth hostage, his fingers cold on Shiro’s cheek, “That was a rhetorical question, Shirogane,” he says, and Shiro’s smile stings across Keith’s gloves, catches him off guard.

“Okay,” Shiro answers, muffled, counting the bones in Keith’s hands, counting the shapes, and when he’s done, he holds their palms close, together, scented after the city and gasoline and half eaten chocolate bars.

Okay, he thinks.

Good.


End file.
